


Proximity

by Palebluedot



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domesticity, Established Relationship, Introspection, Sharing a Bed, abuse of author’s physics education for the sake of some similes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 18:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19339864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot/pseuds/Palebluedot
Summary: He can feel Crowley now where he’s coiled around him, can feel his heart sparking and roiling away behind a scant few layers of warm atoms — histrueheart, not the wet, four-chambered thing that serves a different function entirely.





	Proximity

Truth be told, Aziraphale could almost do without a bedroom. He never did get the hang of sleep, and while beds are quite pleasant to read in, a well-stuffed sofa or armchair has just as much to offer, and takes up much less space. If he lived alone, Aziraphale might not bother with one at all.

Emphasis on _if._

As if on cue, Crowley appears, pausing in the doorway to lean against it, arms crossed. “Mind if I join you?”

Aziraphale turns over the duvet cover beside him and gives the mattress a little pat. “Please do.”

Already crossing the room, Crowley sheds his jacket and boots, leaving them where they drop, slips between the bedcovers, and nudges Aziraphale’s legs apart to lie between them with practiced ease. Aziraphale welcomes him happily. Another reason he never cared much for beds before Crowley — when lain in alone, they can sometimes feel so monstrously empty and wide. One can easily become unmoored. Now, pinned as he is under as fine an anchor as the Almighty ever created, all is snug and small again.

“You know you’ve a perfectly lovely pillow up here,” Aziraphale reproaches without much feeling when Crowley rests his head on his belly, bony edges poking into the padding underneath.

Crowley stays put. “Got a better one down here, thanks.”

After a few-odd thousand years, Aziraphale has learned not to argue this point further, so he contents himself with reaching down and trailing his fingers through Crowley’s hair. The perfectly manicured strands fall limp in a delightful little domino effect the longer he keeps at it. Crowley’s muffled protests tickle as they rumble through Aziraphale’s middle, and it strikes Aziraphale that it’s a strange thing indeed to press their forms together like this. Skin to skin. For what is skin to them but a vessel, an avatar? A box to tick to play the game the way it’s done on the ground. But there is something else Aziraphale has learned — bottled up inside these bodies, they can very nearly _touch._

He can feel Crowley now where he’s coiled around him, can feel his heart sparking and roiling away behind a scant few layers of warm atoms — his _true_ heart, not the wet, four-chambered thing that serves a different function entirely. It is a faint reflection of all that he is; the filter dulls the signal considerably. Like standing in the center of a thunderstorm covered head to toe in cellophane wrap, unable to feel a single drop. But without such constructs, Aziraphale could never reach the storm at all.

Such a maddening, disappointing thing it was to discover that their very essences repelled one another when unconstrained. As he recoiled, Aziraphale winced, ashamed and dreading hurt feelings — “Am I _really_ so repulsive, angel?” — only to find that Crowley had jerked back just as far. Repeated experiments only proved that although they wanted it, though their very souls called for each other, some hardwired instinct or physical law would not permit them to approach. Sheepishly, they’d recorporated themselves and sat to talk.

“I don’t understand it,” said Aziraphale. “You used to be like me. Surely we’re not so different.”

“And someday you could become like me. You won’t,” Crowley assured him, quickly mollifying his knee-jerk indignation. “You see? We’re different enough.”

The whole affair put Aziraphale in mind of magnets, the way their alike ends repelled one another, how horribly unfair it was that they bonded so completely through difference.

Now, though, bound up in flesh of their own and holding tight to each other's forms, that same tension builds but does not release. Shielded as they are, they may keep each other close. Even alike ends of magnets may be made to press flush if held in place by a sufficient force, and these little pockets of earthly matter that may caress and hold and push faces to necks and fingers through hair and lips to lips and _fit_ together are somehow strong enough.

It is not quite what his heart calls for when it calls for touch; he shall always want for that. But it is more than a consolation prize. It is _exhilarating._ Between the great tidal pull of their souls crackling through their forms, beating against the walls in attempts to retreat and advance by turns, as well as the simple thrill of the shared warmth of blood, every approximation of contact fills Aziraphale with such an upswell of feeling, of riotous, determined love, that he has no idea how Crowley ever sleeps through it. Perhaps proximity is as soothing for Crowley as it is invigorating for Aziraphale; he has never thought to ask.

He’s not sleeping now, though. The sheets rasp against Aziraphale’s legs as Crowley turns over, props his chin on arms he folds over Aziraphale’s chest and peers up at him. “You’re awfully quiet,” he says. It’s a prodding sort of observation, one that fills Aziraphale with that old, familiar gratitude — Crowley never misses a hint, even those he scarcely realizes he’s dropped. 

He reaches down, takes Crowley’s face in hand. Looks fondly a moment at orange eyes and disheveled hair, then wishes unbidden for _more._

It is a fundamental law of this universe that no two things may occupy exactly the same space at exactly the same time. One of the Almighty’s little cruelties. Aziraphale is greedy for it anyway. He wants to be exactly where Crowley is, exactly when. Such things cannot be even among angels — they are but matter after all, strange matter and charmed, but matter nonetheless. He never cared before he met Crowley. Now he is forever dogged and hunted by the desire to twine together completely in the dark between the stars or here in this bed, to do so much more than only align their hands together through a pane of glass. To have impossibly more than the already impossible. But even miracles have their limits. This, his greatest, most precious indulgence must also be his greatest denial.

Aziraphale has spent all his earthly life collecting, haunting shops and markets, weighing what he has against what he wants. He knows a good trade when he sees one.

Crowley is still waiting for a reply. Demons are not often regarded as patient creatures, but that is what Crowley has shown him — six thousand years of unwavering, perhaps undeserved patience.

“Come here,” he says, filling the words with as much care as he can muster. Still it falls short — if Crowley could only feel all that he does, if he could _know_ —

Crowley grins, and does as he’s bid. Their ribs slot briefly together as he slides up Aziraphale’s body, not made one from the other, but as good as. Muscle stretching over steadfast bone, warmth and weight abundant. He tucks his nose behind Aziraphale’s ear, then it’s all frenzied tides within him and the twin smells of sulphur and ozone around him, the sweet sting of static electricity when Crowley’s lips brush his skin. Aziraphale wraps his arms around Crowley’s back and keeps him there until his breathing slows and the feeling drains from his own limbs. He keeps his movements careful so as not to wake him as he slips out from underneath him, draws the covers around Crowley’s shoulders and opens a book to wait for morning.

**Author's Note:**

> If you finished this and thought, hey, I want to read something where they _can_ touch without bodies, I really cannot recommend [Like light, refracted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18579133) by [tinsnip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/pseuds/tinsnip) enough, it’s phenomenal and I think about it DAILY.
> 
> Comments are love! <3


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